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Twitter regrets and glass houses: 8 things we learned from the Musk bio

By Will Oremus

20 Sep 2023 · 5 min read

informed Summary

  1. Walter Isaacson's biography of Elon Musk reveals that Musk's father, Errol Musk, owned a share of emeralds from three small black-market mines in Zambia, which he sold for around $210,000. However, the mines went bankrupt in the 1980s and little of the money ever made its way to Elon or his siblings.

Walter Isaacson's new biography of Elon Musk has made headlines for its now-disputed account of how Musk supposedly scuttled a Ukrainian drone attack by pulling the plug on the Starlink satellite internet service guiding the drones. Both Musk and Isaacson now say the service was already limited in a way that prevented the attack.

But the 688-page tome, for which Isaacson spent two years shadowing Musk, also fills in some other details about Musk's life and career that have garnered less attention. Here are some of the questions about the billionaire Tesla and SpaceX CEO that the book answers, or at least sheds light on - and which Musk has not disputed, at least so far.

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